The Master; a Novel

Despite its long stretch of winter, in which May might wed December in no incompatible union, ’twas a happy soil, this Acadia, a country of good air and great spaces; two-thirds...

Since the sled accident that had crippled him for life, Billy was full of nervous terrors, and the night had been charged with mysterious noises. Within the lonely wooden house...

The death of his father--of whom he had seen so little--gave Matt a haunting sense of the unsubstantiality of things. What! that strong, wiry man, with the shrewd, weather-beate...

Other rumors, too, came by coach to the village--rumors of blizzard and shipwreck--each with its opportunities of exhortation and expectoration. But in the lonely forest home, p...

Mrs. Strang was busy in Deacon Hailey’s kitchen. The providential death of Mrs. Hailey had given her chores to do at the homestead; for female servants--or even male--were scarc...

The old year had rolled off into the shadows, and the new had spun round as far as April. Spring came to earth for a few hours a day, and behind her Winter, whistling, clanged h...

As soon as he could get away next morning Matt drew on his oversocks and started for home, racked by indefinite fears. He had not troubled to rouse Tommy to take his watch, for...

The long, endless years, crowded with petty episodes and uniformities, and moving like a cumbrous, creeping train that stops at every station, flash like an express past the eye...

Halifax exceeded Matt’s expectations, and gave him a higher opinion of his mother. For the first time his soul received the shock of a great town, or what was a great town to hi...

But the dauntless, practical youth lay beneath the dreamer, even as the Puritan lay beneath the artist. Matt could not consent to live on his host, the glass-blower, who shared...

Billy Strang was dreaming happy dreams--dreams of action and adventure, in which he figured not as the morbid cripple, but as the straight-limbed hero. Matt was generally with h...

On a dull February day a respectably clad steerage passenger disembarked at Southampton with little luggage and great hopes. He was only twenty, but he looked several years olde...

Only, where to learn? There was the rub. He had looked to his uncle to put him in the way of instantly acquiring art, and here had he wasted a week without acquiring even inform...

In the heated discussions at Grainger’s of the demerits of the painters of the day, no one ever mentioned the name of Strang except once; and then the Christian name was not Mat...

“Funny I’ve never been to see your place. I must look you up one day.” Thus Herbert at uncertain intervals, but he never carried out his threat. His life was too full, and he ha...

Matt’s desire to hear the brotherhood of the brush on Art was gratified _ad nauseam_ at Cornpepper’s, for a batch of artists of all ages, together with a couple of journalists,...

“The sort of weather to make one want to be a figure-model,” Herbert said, wearily, as he flicked finically at “Daniel before Nebuchadnezzar,” now well on its way to completion....

The summer rolled heavily along, bringing strange new experiences to Matt Strang, and strange glimpses of other art-worlds than Herbert’s. For he did not starve, though Herbert...

With a step that faltered from nervousness even more than from the weakness due to a diet of one meal per diem, Matt Strang passed across the clangorous court-yard of Burlington...

His own boots preoccupied Matt’s attention ere the New Year dawned. Had “Four-toes” continued going to Grainger’s, instead of letting his subscription lapse perforce with the Ch...

But the prodigal son was not fated to see any of his relatives immediately upon his return to his native land except his mother, and this was scarcely his mother, this pale crea...

Lying awake next morning after a night of troubled dreams, it flashed upon him that he ought scarcely to go and see Miss Coble again upon the mere impulsive invitation given on...

Foresight is insight. It was due to Matthew Strang’s ignorance of life and of himself that his marriage in no way turned out as he had calculated. Oh, the fatal mistake of it, p...

The studio bell had tinkled so often that afternoon that Mr. Matthew Strang refused to budge from the comfortable arm-chair in which he sat smoking his cigarette and reading the...

As a matter of habit Mr. Matthew Strang went, some weeks later, to the Academy Soirée to add his handshake to the many suffered by the presidential image of patience at the top...

The sands of the season were running out, but Matthew Strang sifted them for every grain of the gold of meetings with Eleanor Wyndwood. He was shy of formal visits to the house,...

Herbert Strang had gone down to Devonshire to finish his portrait of Mrs. Wyndwood, whose dress was still unrecognizable, and who was so agreeably surprised by the face that she...

The old-fashioned yellow coach, top-heavy with pyramidal luggage, rattled along the Devonshire coast, striking its apex against over-arching boughs, and Matthew Strang sat on th...

They fleeted the days delightfully, as men did in the golden world. They rode together on the rolling moors, they drove through the Devonshire lanes, they strolled through combe...

A letter from Billy had indeed brought the news that Rosina’s father was no more. Matthew had never thought untenderly of old Coble; the mountain of a man had acted generously a...

How he lived through the rest of the week he never definitely remembered. He would have willingly given the days away, but, as they had to be filled up somehow, they left confus...

He emerged into the Rue de Rivoli with its pretentious architecture, its glittering shop windows, its bustle of life; across the road the gardens of the Tuileries stretched away...